SurVision Magazine
An
international online magazine that
publishes Surrealist poetry
in English.
Issue Seven
JAMES WALTON
Tom Bowler
As sabotage frost slowly recedes to the brush
of the tonsil licking morning sun
turves ornament verdant for gullible worms,
opening up the overlocker in the magpie's throat
notes intoned so a day can't repeat
such a chorister's whim or find the pulse
throbbing almost silently in the aftermath
of an egg yolk sky warming a plate
Fluttering day set down like confetti coins
signed for in pawned epilogues drawn
from all the thawing bodies,
lost to sight but inertly wondering while asleep
how a soul dreams in an owl's wings
to rise ragged against troubling thorns
in the leap of a thought ahead of itself
where sprawling waves on summons divide
Glassy shivers split from glacier tongues
conjure every colour that Da Vinci ever dreamed
gives the old joking kaleidoscope,
a grin that will stop tides with orange skittles
the brazier morning cups blessing hands
grants the favour of a billion crystal thoughts
on the porch the warming cat rolls in smiles
from rainbows that pocket all the scintillating marbles
Twice I died
no corridor of light
but a dream of origami
outcrops and seams of burgundy
a heartbeat irregular
seventeen electrode readings
a peace keeping force of medicos
four chambers without doors
once my friend Astrid's austere father
left a headband in Japanese
from when the farmers
took Tokyo for a day
when I caught up years later
the translated arabesques
in writing still vermillion deep
as a footpad in wood block
spelt out support our cause
that was the future
and I was a child
they all thought had passed
Salt and Vinegar Please
Some things aren't a colour
but more like that misty fetish
when you peel a mandarine,
and a fog from Rumi's pool
takes a moment out of the air.
The world is stalled on an errand
by a pithy beguile of wobble
a then coming back forever,
webbed over and through
a honeycomb lacquered with it.
Leaving you espaliered on a smile
warm bricks against your back
out front the crisp ironed world,
has winter in a laminate
as perfect as the first hot chip.
Your scalded tongue
mouthing more.
James Walton is from Australia. He worked as a librarian, a farm labourer, and mostly a public sector union official. He is published in many anthologies, journals, and newspapers. He has been shortlisted for the ACU National Literature Prize, the MPU International Prize, The William Wantling Prize, the James Tate Prize, and is a winner of the Raw Art Review Chapbook Competition. His poetry collections include The Leviathan's Apprentice (Publish
and Print U.K., 2015), Walking Through Fences (ASM & Cerberus Press, 2018), Unstill Mosaics (Busybird, 2019), and Abandoned Soliloquies (Uncollected Press 2019).
